Historic Harriman Clubhouse, a haven for Lower East Side boys since 1901, to close next year

Kids take part in the Summer Superheroes Program at The Boys Club in Harriman Clubhouse in 2016. The building will shut its doors in 2019. (Robert Sabo / New York Daily News)

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The latest casualties of Lower East Side gentrification: The 117-year-old Harriman Clubhouse — and perhaps the parents who send their sons there.

The Boys’ Club of New York announced the historic haven for local youths will close its doors next June, with the piece of prime real estate up for sale as the group seeks a new space.

Though the club says its varied programs will continue for the next 12 months and beyond, news of its decision left some in the Manhattan neighborhood worried about the future.

“I just told my kids, and they’re both heartbroken,” said a devastated Jennifer Claudio, a working single mother raising two sons. “Boys’ Club is more than a community place, it’s like a family.”

As the Lower East Side changed in recent times, she said, inexpensive programs like the Boys’ Club became rarities.

“Our neighborhood pretty much caters to the wealthier,” said Claudio. “Boys’ Club is a way to keep kids off the street and do something positive. You don’t have that resource in many places.”

Javier Chavis, 16, an aspiring basketball player from the neighborhood, said a visit to the Boys’ Club was part of his regular routine.

“It’s pretty sad,” said Chavis. “I’m kinda disappointed that it’s closing, being that I come here every day to work out.”

Historic Harriman Clubhouse, epicenter of the nation's Boys Clubs since 1876, will close in 2019. (Robert Sabo / New York Daily News)

Property values in the changing Manhattan neighborhood are in a different stratosphere than when the Boys’ Club launched in 1876. A former church down the block from the Boys’ Club sold for $41 million in 2012, and a two-bedroom condo on E. 12th St. is currently listed for $4.3 million.

“There’s a deep sadness and sense of resignation,” said Pensri Ho, mother of a Boys’ Club regular, about the closing. “Just because some people were priced out of the neighborhood doesn’t mean there isn’t a need.”

Boys’ Club of New York executive director/CEO Stephen Tosh, in a letter to parents, wrote that the venerable organization “did not make this decision lightly” to shutter the oldest of its three city outposts. And he acknowledged the city’s changing demographics factored into the move — as did the cost of maintaining a building of the seven-story clubhouse’s age and size.

Profits from the sale of the E. 10th St. and Ave. A property were intended to let the group expand its reach to Brooklyn and the South Bronx while keeping its Lower East Side presence, the letter said. The Boys’ Club already runs clubhouses in East Harlem and Flushing, Queens.

“The sale of the property will allow us to provide services to an even greater number of boys and young men in underserved communities,” said Tosh.

The Boys’ Club launched in a school basement two blocks away from its current home, where the doors opened in 1901. The club was founded by philanthropist E.H. Harriman as an urban oasis where young boys and men could avoid the temptations of the street.